by johnnymarin | Oct 14, 2017 | Bird Netting
PESHAWAR: Amid awareness campaign launched by the provincial government for the dengue-affected people in the provincial capital, the mosquito-borne disease on Sunday infected 310 more people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
According to government officials, 26 people have so far lost their lives as a result of dengue virus in KP. The provincial Health Department reported that sessions were conducted in the government-run schools in the dengue-hit Tehkal and Pishtakhara union councils, where the virus was reported in July this year. The awareness sessions were started three days ago where health experts informed local residents about dengue and its breeding causes and gave them useful suggestions for remaining safe from dengue mosquitoes.
The government is stated to have spent millions of rupees by providing services to dengue patients in the public sector hospitals, conducting larvicide sprays in the affected areas and distributing mosquito nets and repellent lotions among the residents of Tehkal and Pishtakhara.
However, these efforts by the government didn’t help control dengue virus and it has been infecting 300-400 people every day. Health experts are of the opinion that there are still open water reservoirs in different forms in the dengue affected areas where thousands of dengue larvae are breeding.
“Since weather is quite hot therefore majority of the people are using water air-coolers in their houses and work places. These air-coolers are the among best places for dengue breeding,” a health expert at the Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) opined.
Pleading anonymity, he said some of the people in Tehkal and Pishtakhara had kept pigeons on their rooftops where water was put into pots, saying they found dengue larvae in air-coolers and in pots from which pigeons drank water.
Meanwhile, the Dengue Response Unit confirmed that 1,527 people were taken to different hospitals where 310 were discharged with dengue. It said of the 310 patients, 120 were admitted in hospitals and 116 were discharged from hospitals their recovery.
Presently, according to DRU, 365 dengue patients are under treatment in different hospitals of the province. Khyber Teaching Hospital, where 917 patients were taken with fever and body ache, 196 of them were diagnosed with dengue. At the moment, KTH is providing services to 235 indoor dengue patients.
Around 42 patients tested positive at the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) of whom 28 were admitted in the hospital. The Hayatabad Medical Complex also diagnosed 45 patients with dengue. It had received 156 patients.
The Naseerullah Babar Hospital in Peshawar tested two patients dengue positive. Similarly, Mansehra reported nine dengue positive cases, Mardan eight cases, Buner four and Abbottabad two cases.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by johnnymarin | Oct 13, 2017 | Pigeons in the News
Koka is a respected figure in Cairo’s pigeon fighting world. His life revolves around preparing for the contests, in which whole neighbourhoods clash to hunt and capture each other’s pigeons.
Away from the duels, he spends his time caring for the hundreds of pigeons he rears in a ramshackle wooden tower he has built on his roof.
Like numerous other breeders, Koka treasures the pigeons for their loyalty, discipline and the deep pride they bring him.
But his pigeon fighting days may be numbered. Coming from a conservative community, the 29-year-old is under immense pressure to quit his passion, get married and settle down.
Fearing that his next contest could be his last, Koka challenges one of Cairo’s best pigeon fighting neighbourhoods. Will he cement his reputation as a great pigeon handler or lose his parting battle?
I stumbled upon the phenomenon of pigeon contests in Cairo while working on different topics in this mega city’s endless suburbs. I was always impressed by the fragile wooden structures standing on rooftops all over the city, and I knew that they were connected to pigeons, but I would never have thought that there was a whole world up there with its own rules, even with its own language.
I was wandering the streets of Garbage City, an area of mostly Christian waste workers, when I first met Koka, one of the strongest competitors inside the community of pigeoneers. Standing on his pigeon tower felt like being in a different world, far from the chaos that rules the streets.
Fortunately, I met Koka during wintertime, the season for pigeon contests. It was right before some major encounters between different neighbourhoods that have a long tradition of going into battles with their pigeons.
Seeing a race for the first time was an overwhelming visual experience, which made me stick to this topic for the following three years. These pigeon contests served as a perfect vehicle for getting an inside view of such a closed community. I was taken to gatherings and battles in areas that I would never have gotten to otherwise.
The society of the pigeon fighters is unknown even to most Egyptians. Their races are based on a sophisticated set of rules and their language is dominated by military expressions. The combatants call themselves knights and each knight has a nom de guerre, such as “The Butcher” in Koka’s case.
During filming, the question that interested me the most was, “How does a pigeon – otherwise the symbol of peace – become the token of martial spirit and male pride?”
One of the fighters tried to explain it to me this way: “Imagine it like it was Barcelona against Real Madrid. It is like football, only that it’s more serious, because we’ve been doing it for way longer than them.”
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by johnnymarin | Oct 12, 2017 | Bird Deterrent Products
If you feed them, they will roost.
And poop. They will definitely poop.
Nesting pigeons and the scat they leave behind have been a perennial and somewhat costly problem for Clark County. Complaints from residents are so common that Commission Chairman Steve Sisolak wants to discuss what can be done during Tuesday’s commission meeting.
“We’ve got a proliferation of pigeons in some of these areas,” Sisolak said. “There’s a lot of property damage as a result of pigeons roosting.”
The bird’s corrosive poop can damage paint, concrete roof tiles and air conditioning equipment. Their nesting material can clog a drainage system. There’s also a concern about the spread of disease from pigeon carcasses and waste.
Chris Bramley, who oversees the county government’s pest control management, said most of the county’s facilities “have some kind of a pigeon issue.” Flocks of 50 to 60 pigeons can be found living on some roofs.
But the problem has become exceptionally noticeable at the West Flamingo Senior Center, supervisor Diane Olson-Baskin said.
Despite the county’s efforts to dissuade the birds from roosting there — including a sonic repellent system — close to 30 pigeons have made the community center home, Olson-Baskin said. She believes the blame lies in some patrons’ delight in tossing piece of bread to the birds every morning.
“We try to discourage people from feeding the pigeons, but they enjoy it so much that all we can do is encourage them to feed them as far as possible from the building,” Olson-Baskin said.
Such is the stuff that makes up the passionate debate over pigeons. While some people see the birds as pests, others love them.
When county commissioners considered a law banning the feeding of feral pigeons in January 2012 they were inundated with opinions from both sides. A majority of commissioners voted against the proposed law.
Bramley said he has a hard time telling people they should not feed the birds. He understands it’s an enjoyable pastime for many.
Still, “if people want to feed pigeons they should feed them in small amounts,” he said. “Don’t let them learn that you’re taking care of them like they’re your children.”
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by johnnymarin | Oct 11, 2017 | Pigeons in the News
As we know, there are a great many mad people in the southwestern bit of the country. They claim often that a black panther is living on Exmoor and that if you paint a picture, it’ll be better if you are standing on a ley line.
And now the people of Exeter are saying that homeless people, many of whom may be from Poland, are roaming the streets at night eating pigeons. There are fears this could get out of hand with a local police community support officer saying “now we’re eating pigeons, now we’re killing seagulls. It escalates.”
One resident said she saw two men pounce on a pigeon and put it in a sack and in the space of 20 minutes they’d captured 14 of them. This has made the Royal Society for the Prevention of Birds very angry, with a spokesman describing the incident as “horrible”.
“Unlikely” is nearer the mark, though. I knew a man once who wore a suit, played a lot of golf and had never had so much as a parking ticket. But one day, while walking to work over Waterloo Bridge, he remembered being told that you can never kick a pigeon, because it has a housefly-like ability to get out of the way before your foot arrives. And for reasons that haunted him for the rest of his life, he decided to put the theory to the test.
So, in front of all the other suited-and- booted Margaret Thatcher enthusiasts, he took an almighty swing at the bird strutting about in his path and — wallop — it sailed 6ft into the air and crashed back down to earth, stone dead. This proved, much to his embarrassment, that you can kick a pigeon to death.
I had a similar moment in northern Spain about 10 years ago. I was out and about in the packed streets of San Sebastian when I noticed a listless pigeon sitting on a windowsill. “I’ll put that out of its misery,” I thought, and tried to break its neck. But the manoeuvre went wrong and its head came off, which caused the body to fall to the floor where, much to the horror of the many onlookers, it flapped about for several minutes before it decided there was no point any more and lay still.
The weird thing is that this was Spain, where stabbing cows and throwing donkeys off tower blocks is basically like Swingball. And yet they were horrified that I’d pulled a pigeon’s head off.
I think the problem is that we learn from an early age that pigeons are clever. That you can take one to Berlin and it is able to find its way back to its loft in Peterborough.
The Nazis certainly thought this way. Heinrich Himmler was a pigeon enthusiast and made plans for birds to be used to convey messages from agents ahead of an invasion of Britain.
And when authorities here got wind of this, instead of saying, “Oh, don’t be stupid. Why would you use a bird to convey a message when you have a radio?”, they decided the south coast should be patrolled by falcons. And in the Scilly Isles, it really was. That really did happen. It was the Battle of Britain, with feathers.
That legacy lives on in the way people react when pigeons are being harmed. But the thing is that salmon can also home and no one minds when Jeremy Paxman hauls one of those from a river and clubs it to death. Or when a little old lady buys a tin of its flesh and feeds it to her cat.
The fact is, though, that unlike salmon, pigeons are a menace. In towns their muck ruins buildings and in the countryside they can do more damage to crops than an army of drunken students with an alien fixation and garden roller. If you shoot a pigeon — which is harder than kicking one, I assure you — and you open it up, you’ll find more grain in its stomach than in the silos at Hovis.
Which brings us back to the issues in Exeter. If you are fit and sober and you have a gun, it is only just possible to kill a fit pigeon. So I’m suspicious of the story that these homeless drunks are able, in the space of 20 minutes, to get 14 live birds into a sack. (I feel a game show coming on here.)
Let’s just say, though, that they are able, through the fog of strong cider, to catch pigeons, and if things escalate, seagulls. So what? Yes, under the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981 it’s illegal to kill, injure or take any wild bird, but this was drawn up to stop people stealing ospreys and ptarmigans.
Let’s not forget, shall we, that Ken Livingstone, darling of the left and therefore an RSPB poster boy, ejected all the people selling grain to tourists in the pigeon-infested Trafalgar Square and when Wilbur and Myrtle continued to show up with birdseed they’d bought from a Chelsea ladies’ health food shop he introduced a Harris hawk to the area. Which is the Messerschmitt of the skies.
He’d be the first to say that homeless people should be encouraged to eat pigeons and I’d go further. Right now, the hedgerows on my farm are teeming with succulent blackberries and the few trees that haven’t been ruined by deer and squirrels are laden with all kinds of delicious fruit.
If a homeless person were to spend a day in the woods with some Rambo traps and a bit of cunning, he would end up with a feast that even Henry VIII would call “a bit extravagant”.
The problem is, if he killed a deer for some venison and a squirrel for seasoning, he’d have the whole country calling for his blood. And that’s ridiculous. We need to lose our dewy-eyed Disney sentimentality and accept that homeless people eating pigeons they’ve caught is better for them, better for our windowsills and better for the coffers at the NHS than encouraging them instead to eat takeaway pizza and Double Decker chocolate bars they’ve half-inched from the local corner shop.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by johnnymarin | Oct 10, 2017 | Pigeons in the News
Who needs Farmersonly.com when love can blossom in the livestock barn.
If it wasn’t for the Kansas State Fair, Kacey Rieger, 22, Powhattan and Clay Toews, 24, Burrton, would never have met four years ago. A mutual friend introduced them while they were both showing livestock. They turned out to be agricultural soulmates and will be getting married next Saturday in Brown County.
Preparing for a wedding would be reason enough to forgo a trip to Hutchinson with a livestock trailer filled with their prize Duroc, Chester, Spot and Yorkshire swine to show.
But neither the bride-to-be nor her fiancé would consider it.
Resting on a bleacher in the Sheep, Swine and Goat Building on Friday morning, they were with her brother, 14-year-old Jake Rieger, and her parents, Lori and Bill Rieger, in between swine shows.
Clay Toews says he grew up at the Kansas State Fair.
“I use to show brown Swiss cows,” he said. His father, Bill Toews, is superintendent at the dairy barn.
“We’re a pretty tight tribe,” Clay said. “The Holling family has been showing swine for 56 years, the Harms family 50 years and the Wehner’s 25. That’s consecutive years.”
Now Clay and Kacey will return next year as husband and wife building their own memories. They have had a head start, showing swine together for the past three.
Next Saturday’s wedding will be in a barn at a pumpkin patch near the Rieger farm. A pit-barbecued pig is on the menu.
— Kathy Hanks
McPherson man shows 180 pigeons
He had made it all the way to the grandstand before the Kansas Highway Patrol caught the culprit that flew the coop.
They returned Dave Orth’s pigeon safely back to its cage.
The McPherson pigeon man was thankful. He came with 180 pigeons, and he wanted to return with them all.
Orth’s success can be seen in the poultry barn. He had a number of placings, including this year’s grand champion and reserve champion pigeons. His granddaughter, Brinley, had the grand champion at last year’s fair. Another granddaughter, Jayden, also received several honors. Someday his toddler grandson, Hudson, will have pigeons at the fair, too.
But for Orth, it’s not about winning a prize.
“People haven’t seen birds like these,” he said. “We want people to know there are more than just pigeons that fly around and crap all over cars.”
No, these aren’t your flying nuisances. These are fancy pigeons – homing pigeons, racing pigeons, Birmingham rollers, helmet pigeons. There are many other breeds in several colors and sizes. One breed has curly feathers. Another is snowy white.
He used to race pigeons at a place near Medora. He goes to a pigeon swap meet in Missouri. He takes his pigeons to shows across the Midwest.
Pigeons are a passion that developed when he was in eighth grade.
“Then you grew up and girls didn’t like pigeons,” he said with a laugh.
Later in life, after he had kids and a place to put them, he began growing his flock.
“I got a couple birds and a couple more birds,” Orth said. Now he has more than 300 birds.
His wife doesn’t mind, he said. He has pigeons. She quilts.
His grandchildren, who entered some of the birds in the fair, come over and help him feed and water them, he said.
Pigeons are a food source in developing countries, he said. They are like eating a turtle dove. In the 1940s and 1950s in the United States, people could buy squab in a can.
During World War II, pigeons were used to carry messages, Orth said.
Orth said these days there is good money in racing and show pigeons. What he earns at the Kansas State Fair pays for his annual feed bill.
These are all things he tells folks when he is in the poultry barn at the fair. It’s like a zoo, he said. He works to educate the public about the state fair flock.
Orth does this every year. He enjoys it.
“People come in ’You know what kind of bird that is?” and I tell them.
— Amy Bickel
Peanut legacy
Ron Allen and his sons Jeremy and Heath, might have the healthiest, affordable and one of the oldest concessions at the Kansas State Fair.
On Friday morning, Mark Statzer stopped at their peanut concession stand to grab a $1 bag of roasted peanuts.
The Wichita resident says he stops at the booth every year.
“I’ve already had enough grease for the day,” Statzer said. “I need something calmer.”
The simple product hasn’t changed in 73 years, except they now sell salted and Cajun spiced bags of peanuts. The Allens keep bags of peanuts warm in a large heated metal barrel. They purchased 550 pounds of peanuts to roast during the 10 days.
“Peanuts sell,” Harold said. Though, he says, it has been a slow year for all the vendors in their neighborhood. “Warm peanuts sell best when the weather is cooler. ”
The Allens purchased the stand from Harold and Dorcas Tate — better known as Mutt and Pie. From 1944 to 1992, the Tate boot with its big barrel and shaded by an assortment of beach umbrellas was always the first booth on Pride of Kansas Avenue.
Mutt and Pie missed the 1993 fair due to health issues. Then in 1995, they sold the stand to the Allens.
“They sold it lock, stock and barrel,” said Jeremy. “Literally.”
Along with the barrel, they even included the original signs with the peanut man.
Both Dorcas and Harold have died, but their memory lives on in the State Fair Museum’s exhibit this year.
In the early days, the Tates sold peanuts for 5 cents a pint and 10 cents a quart; however, by today’s standards, a $1 for a bag of roasted peanuts is cheap. Allens also have a brisk business selling soda pop for $1.50.
The peanut booth is a family affair. While Ron is retired, Jeremy and Heath take vacation days off from their jobs to work the fair. Along with the three men, Ron’s wife, Colleen, helps with the booth. Plus Heath’s daughters, Taylor, 18, and Sydney, 11, help.
“They don’t know it yet, but it will be all theirs,” Heath said.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
